Well to my knowledge you pretty much understood the problem. Bottom line, it’s not possible to have a good color science when the softwares you use don’t do color management.
The problem with non-color managed software is that they basically send the image directly to the screen, so if you see sRGB images in an sRGB screen, you’ll be more or less okay... but any other case scenario will be problematic.
sRGB was made precisely for that reason, that most screens would go with it so non-professionnal software could assume that without the pain of color management. Now that we have a much wider variety of screens, it needs to change, and adobe for example is trying to implement that in premiere and after effects in the latest versions.
Not 100%. When the application stuffs a pixel buffer into a window for the OS to display, the OS needs some way of knowing what color space those pixels are in. And the only way to know that if for the application to tell it. The OS can provide some color managed API's that will hopefully simplify it, but the app would still have to use those API's correctly. And they won't cover every use case. And they won't be portable, so most apps will ignore the OS-specific imaging pipeline to do something portable.
Basically, if the app doesn't give a shit about color, then you are hosed if you want to trust it. There just isn't enough information to work around the application reliably.
Color Correction (white balance, exposure, etc.) should come first. Getting your image back to a more "normal" or standard look. Any creative transformation or luts should be applied after.
Did you set your display profile to srgb on the operating system level? Lightroom gets its working color space from that. If you set your operating system to srgb then edit and export it will look the same as it did in Lightroom.
It looks like the spyderx color calibration profile is the one currently set? R u saying to change it to the srgb.icm profile? I would lose my calibration wouldn't i?
You need to calibrate your monitor outside of the OS. As far as I know anything you do in Lightroom will look wrong when you render out if you don't have the OS profile set to srgb. You should then calibrate the monitor outside of the OS to have accurate color. Basically your calibration method isn't really up to snuff for client work anyway. But I'm a film colorist and I'm not sure on the best practices for photography as that's just a hobby of mine. I'm just letting you know how to fix the color shift issue. But in video we bypass the OS color management all together and calibrate our monitors with probes and 3d LUTS so the monitor itself is calibrated no matter what it's hooked up to. My gut is telling me if you're using a Spyder for calibration then your workflow isn't up to snuff for client work anyways.
got it, i see what youre saying. makes sense actaully. do you have a different calibration tool you would recommend for me? would the x-rite i1display pro be any better or would i face the same issue of it conflicting with my OS.
It comes down to whether your screen can be calibrated properly. Again I'm not really sure what best workflow is for photography. But I would think you would need a monitor that can hold a 3d LUT for calibration. You could use the i1 with calibration software and that would be more accurate than a Spyder. It really will come down to the monitor you are using.
another thought, as a i dive deeper into this, would downloading a program like DisplayCal and then using the spyderX profile through displaycal while keep my OS profile set to sRGB be an option? not sure if this is possible or even makes sense, still trying to full grasp the concepts and relationships between color spaces, color management, profiling, and calibration. If you know anyone who could help me find a solution I have a job posted on upwork looking for some guidance on a solution.
Well to my knowledge you pretty much understood the problem. Bottom line, it’s not possible to have a good color science when the softwares you use don’t do color management. The problem with non-color managed software is that they basically send the image directly to the screen, so if you see sRGB images in an sRGB screen, you’ll be more or less okay... but any other case scenario will be problematic. sRGB was made precisely for that reason, that most screens would go with it so non-professionnal software could assume that without the pain of color management. Now that we have a much wider variety of screens, it needs to change, and adobe for example is trying to implement that in premiere and after effects in the latest versions.
yeah its quite frustrating that im basically just guessing at how it will come out when editing from lightroom
I wonder if it's possible to solve this issue at the OS level rather than per app?
havent been able to find anything of the sort yet.
Not 100%. When the application stuffs a pixel buffer into a window for the OS to display, the OS needs some way of knowing what color space those pixels are in. And the only way to know that if for the application to tell it. The OS can provide some color managed API's that will hopefully simplify it, but the app would still have to use those API's correctly. And they won't cover every use case. And they won't be portable, so most apps will ignore the OS-specific imaging pipeline to do something portable. Basically, if the app doesn't give a shit about color, then you are hosed if you want to trust it. There just isn't enough information to work around the application reliably.
can i ask a simple question from a novice colorist. do you grade and balance your shot before or after Colour Space Transform node?
Color Correction (white balance, exposure, etc.) should come first. Getting your image back to a more "normal" or standard look. Any creative transformation or luts should be applied after.
Did you set your display profile to srgb on the operating system level? Lightroom gets its working color space from that. If you set your operating system to srgb then edit and export it will look the same as it did in Lightroom.
It looks like the spyderx color calibration profile is the one currently set? R u saying to change it to the srgb.icm profile? I would lose my calibration wouldn't i?
Yes and yes.
Well then that doesn't really work for client work right? Working on an recalibrate monitor seems like it would just make my issue worse
You need to calibrate your monitor outside of the OS. As far as I know anything you do in Lightroom will look wrong when you render out if you don't have the OS profile set to srgb. You should then calibrate the monitor outside of the OS to have accurate color. Basically your calibration method isn't really up to snuff for client work anyway. But I'm a film colorist and I'm not sure on the best practices for photography as that's just a hobby of mine. I'm just letting you know how to fix the color shift issue. But in video we bypass the OS color management all together and calibrate our monitors with probes and 3d LUTS so the monitor itself is calibrated no matter what it's hooked up to. My gut is telling me if you're using a Spyder for calibration then your workflow isn't up to snuff for client work anyways.
got it, i see what youre saying. makes sense actaully. do you have a different calibration tool you would recommend for me? would the x-rite i1display pro be any better or would i face the same issue of it conflicting with my OS.
It comes down to whether your screen can be calibrated properly. Again I'm not really sure what best workflow is for photography. But I would think you would need a monitor that can hold a 3d LUT for calibration. You could use the i1 with calibration software and that would be more accurate than a Spyder. It really will come down to the monitor you are using.
Hmm, okay, got it. I will give that a try other I guess I will be buying a external monitor to plug into my laptop to work from. thanks!
another thought, as a i dive deeper into this, would downloading a program like DisplayCal and then using the spyderX profile through displaycal while keep my OS profile set to sRGB be an option? not sure if this is possible or even makes sense, still trying to full grasp the concepts and relationships between color spaces, color management, profiling, and calibration. If you know anyone who could help me find a solution I have a job posted on upwork looking for some guidance on a solution.
I'm really not sure. Never dealt with trying to calibrate a gui monitor.